A Shot in the Dark

by Lynne Truss

  ‘I didn’t want to ask you. I hoped I wouldn’t have to. But after talking to the sergeant, and thinking I’d got nearly everything worked out, I’ve realised there’s one thing I don’t understand at all. So you’ve got to tell me. It’s Jo Carver, the strong lady. I just don’t see where she fits in.’

  Mrs Groynes raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? You haven’t worked out how Jo Carver fits in?’

  ‘So who is she? I mean, who was she?’

  Mrs Groynes walked to the door and locked it, then came and sat down. She lit a cigarette. ‘I’ll pour you another cup before I start,’ she said. ‘We might be here for some time.’

  And so Mrs Groynes went back to the very start of the story, to the days when she was the youthful partner (in crime, as well as other things) of the notorious East End mobster Terence Chambers.

  ‘You see, everything changed for Terry and me around the end of the war when he took on these two young people – you could call them wards, I suppose. They weren’t his flesh and blood; they were the kids of a bloke who’d saved his life (that’s what he said) in France in 1918. They stayed friends after. Terry’d gone in for the life of crime, of course, but this other bloke was a musician and as honest as the day is long. And he was widowed, and he had this daughter and this son he was bringing up on his own, and then one day just before VE Day, he was killed in a bus crash, and Terry brought the kids home and that was that.

  ‘Joan was the girl, and Robert was her elder brother. I remember I wasn’t keen on the idea… I wasn’t ready for kids. I said they’d get in the way unless we had them climbing through windows for us like in Oliver Twist – and Terry, he said, all serious, he’d kill anyone who corrupted them kids! It really took me aback how fierce he was about it. He’d never turned on me like that before, and I was quite upset. He said he wanted Jo and Bobby to have a normal life, and God help anyone who led them astray.

  ‘I’ll skip the bits where we bonded at teatimes and visited the Tower of London and went hopping down in Kent and what have you, but we did have some happy times as a little family. Are you comfortable there?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘So, as you rightly guessed, I hit that bank the day before Terry was planning to – but not because I wanted to annoy him, dear – or “earn his everlasting enmity”, as you put it. Oh, no. I wanted to save his bacon – not that he ever thanked me, but there you are. The thing is, dear, I was sure he was being led into a trap. He was working with this new partner at the time – and there was something dodgy about this cove; I could smell he was a copper. “You’re being set up, darling,” I said. “Think again, sweetheart,” I said. “The job’s too good to be true, love.” But would he listen? So I came up with this plan as the only way to stop him: rob the bank myself the day before.’

  ‘That was very clever.’

  ‘Thank you, dear. But I made a big error of judgement. I needed help, and I told young Jo and Bobby what was going on, and they offered to be my gang for the day, so that no one else was in on it. I should have said no. But at the time, I couldn’t see the harm. I didn’t see how it would “corrupt” them. Jo could drive the getaway car, so she didn’t even need to be inside the bank. But Bobby – well, he might have been older, but he was inexperienced, and he made a mistake.’

  ‘What sort of mistake?’

  ‘Well, although we had the masks and all that, he let that Crystal man see his hands.’

  Twitten had already discussed this with Sergeant Brunswick – how easy it was not to spot the giveaway fingers; how clever Bobby Melba was in keeping them moving, so that you didn’t notice.

  ‘I’d told him to keep them covered, but he sneezed. He put his hand up automatically, you see. And there was just a split second, in the middle of everything, when Crystal saw them. And then Bobby said – oh, my good gawd – he said, “Sorry, Auntie Palmeira!”’

  ‘Lumme.’

  ‘Yes, dear. Lumme indeed. That’s why I put the bag over Crystal’s head, dear. It’s why I fired the shots. I wanted to scare him into forgetting what he’d seen.’

  ‘Because if Mr Crystal had remembered the funny fingers, Terence Chambers might find out you had corrupted his wards?’

  ‘That’s right. And then he would have killed me. Simple as that. For leading them into violent crime.’

  ‘I see.’ Twitten was thoughtful. ‘Wasn’t the word sneeze already on Crystal’s list?’

  ‘Not already, no. He’d only just written it when I shot him, dear. Before that, the list only had the bags, and Palmeira, and the run-over policeman – which I notice is a detail you never even got started on, dear.’

  ‘The problem I’m having with all this, Mrs Groynes, is that the Aldersgate Stick-up wasn’t a violent crime, was it? It was pretty peaceful. No one was hurt.’

  ‘Ah. I’m afraid that’s just the myth, dear. No one inside the bank was hurt, that’s true. But while Jo was waiting in the car in a quiet side-street near to Smithfield, she spotted Terry’s new partner –’

  ‘The one who was dodgy?’

  ‘Exactly. And he saw her too. And when she realised he knew who she was, and what she was doing there, she panicked and she ran him over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She killed him?’

  ‘That’s right. He was the run-over policeman. Crystal hadn’t remembered that incident, of course. Miss Sibert must have led him to it.’

  ‘Did she do it accidentally? Jo, I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. She reversed over him to be on the safe side.’

  ‘That’s awful. How old was she?’

  ‘Eighteen, dear.’

  ‘Just out of the blue, she did that?’

  ‘That’s how it seemed, yes. Of course afterwards I asked myself whether there had ever been any warning signs, and I’m afraid there had. She was what they nowadays call a bad seed, dear. Looking back, it’s quite possible she shoved her own father under that bus! But she had Bobby, didn’t she? Young Bobby to protect her and cover up for her – that’s often what happens with orphans, isn’t it? He looked out for her all their lives.

  ‘Anyway, when we came out of the bank, Bobby and I had no idea what she’d done – and when she told us, we all swore then and there that Terry must never know any of it.

  ‘That’s how I came down here to Brighton. When I started here at the station, it wasn’t because it was a brilliant place to operate from – although it is – it was because it was a good place to hide. But then, when I looked about me, I started to realise how easy it would be to divide and rule in this town. And of course you know the rest.’

  ‘So what did Bobby and Jo do then?’

  ‘They both went to drama school, which Terry paid for, none the wiser. He’s still very proud of them. He wanted them both to be actors on the legitimate stage, but he’s happy with the careers they’ve got. I’d already got Bobby interested in phrenology, and he took to it so well that it was quite a natural thing for him to make it his livelihood.’

  ‘And Jo became a strong lady. Was she always strong, then?’

  ‘No. While she was at drama school, she had a silly run-in with another student. I think she just laughed at him when he was doing a love scene, something like that. She was never very tactful; it’s like she’s got a bit missing, you see. A bit missing.

  ‘But this other student was a vengeful sort of person, it turned out. She thought he’d forgiven her, but he was just biding his time – and one day they had fencing practice and he deliberately wounded her, and she ended up in a wheelchair for a while. And that’s when she started strengthening her wrists and arms – and discovered, in the end, she could tear up telephone books and whatnot.

  ‘I have to say I was a bit worried about her combining phenomenal strength with that bad-seededness of hers, and so was Bobby – but he was always there to look after her, you see. They were so close, Bobby and Jo. They toured everywhere together. They just kept it a secret tha
t they were related.’

  Twitten remembered with some embarrassment that he had asked how Jo Carver ‘fitted in’. It was too late now to re-phrase the question. And Mrs Groynes had evidently not finished yet. She got up and poured them two more cups of tea.

  ‘And then Bobby turned to crime anyway?’ he prompted, as he took the cup and saucer from her. ‘He dressed up as a woman from the Opinion Poll. Does Terry know about that?’

  ‘Oh, no, dear. Definitely not. The thing is, after the Stick-up there was a piece in the paper about this undercover policeman who’d been run over near Smithfield. I’d been right, you see: he was a lousy rozzer all the time. And guess what? He’d been a war hero, just like Jo and Bobby’s dad. Bobby couldn’t live with the guilt of it, and he persuaded Jo that they should send money anonymously to the policeman’s widow. The way they funded it was with the proceeds of the Opinion Poll scam, which they did together. Sometimes the lady was Jo, but more often it was Bobby dressed up. They never kept a penny for themselves.’

  Twitten wasn’t quite convinced by this justification for a crime that robbed innocent people of their prized possessions, but he let it pass. In the relativist world-view of Groynes, the Opinion Poll scam had been in such a good cause that it was practically a charitable enterprise.

  ‘Why red hair?’ Twitten asked.

  ‘Well, when Bobby dressed up as a woman, he always took me as his model, for some reason. His auntie Palmeira. I was very touched by that. I’ve got red hair, you see. It doesn’t really go with being a charlady, so I keep it covered. Sometimes he even used some of my expressions and whatnot. For his own amusement. I didn’t mind. I liked it.’

  ‘Didn’t Bobby put the sergeant onto Jo as a suspect? That wasn’t very brotherly.’

  ‘Yes, but that was just a way of buying time. She had a solid alibi, didn’t she? She’d have been out next day without charges if she hadn’t panicked and escaped. But that’s Jo and Bobby for you. Bobby always thoughtful and protective, and following the plan to the letter; Jo always unpredictable and prone to outbursts of sickening violence. It takes all sorts, dear. It takes all sorts.’

  * * *

  At the Palace Pier, Inspector Steine was thanked for his time as the newsreel men packed up their equipment. It was such a nice day, he thought he would pop to Luigi’s before returning to the station and facing the Twitten Problem that he knew awaited him. Having a permanently hypnotised constable on his team was not a happy prospect.

  On that fateful night at the Hippodrome, people had taken it in turns to say ‘Einstein’ to Twitten, but to no avail. The boy continued to maintain that Mrs Groynes was a criminal Mrs Big, and to dismiss every piece of common-sense reasoning from the same insane perspective.

  ‘Where is your evidence against Mrs Groynes?’

  ‘She destroyed it, sir!’

  ‘We have a typed confession from Jack Braithwaite to the murder of A. S. Crystal.’

  ‘But Mrs Groynes wrote it!’

  The inspector pictured the scene in the future: the telephone rings with news of a post-office robbery in the Fiveways district of the town. First of all, Sergeant Brunswick pipes up, ‘Permission to pose as a postman, sir,’ and then Twitten chips in, ‘I think we need look no further than Mrs Groynes!’

  As he walked, he realised there was someone following a pace or two behind. He stopped to see who it was.

  It was the young reporter from the Argus, who seemed to pop up everywhere. He had been present at the Hippodrome on Steine’s big night; his excellent report – using vivid, verbless sentences in homage to Harry Jupiter – had been a great hit with the editor, who not only re-hired but promoted him.

  ‘They’ve made me Crime Correspondent,’ said Oliver. ‘So I thought I should let you know we’ll be working together in the future, sir.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Steine, pleasantly. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Assuming there’s any crime for you to write about.’

  ‘Oh, I think there will be, sir.’

  They walked together.

  ‘Off the record, sir –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I talked with DCI Peplow at length on the morning that he died, sir, and I got the impression there was no love lost between you.’

  ‘Between me and Peplow? That’s odd. I hardly knew the man.’

  ‘Well, he very much disliked you, sir.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. He considered you overrated. I told him my theory that you had knocked Mr Jupiter into the sea – but that Mr Jupiter’s memory loss saved you from facing charges – and he burst out laughing and stated that your entire career was built on flukes.’

  ‘Flukes?’

  ‘Lucky accidents, sir.’

  ‘I know what flukes are, thank you.’

  ‘I just wondered whether you saw things in the same light yourself, sir. Off the record.’

  Steine scowled. This was outrageous.

  ‘I mean, he did have a point, sir. For instance, it was very lucky for you that the Middle Street Massacre came out as a triumph for you personally,’ Oliver persisted, ‘and it was lucky for you that just as I was about to establish the truth about your knocking Mr Jupiter into the sea, he went in the sea again, together with a rival policeman who was delighted at the prospect of your being exposed.

  ‘Also, you have a very high reputation as a policeman, but it’s not based on any actual success in fighting crime: it’s based on telling people the history of lighting-up time, and whether they can carry a tray of potted geraniums on different sections of the London Underground. And now, in the case of the deaths of Crystal and Braithwaite, a confession just turns up out of the blue that absolves you of any need to detect other culprits.’

  The reporter laughed, but Steine did not. He didn’t like the sound of any of this.

  ‘What are you implying?’ he demanded.

  ‘Nothing at all, sir.’

  ‘Oliver, that confession of Braithwaite’s is patently genuine.’

  ‘If you say so, sir.’

  ‘The murderer is the only person who could have written it. No one apart from the police knew the detail of the regimental sword. In fact, outside the police station, even the method of killing was unknown. Ergo, the guilty man wrote it.’

  ‘Absolutely, sir. I appreciate that. But the fact remains: it’s still lucky for you that he did, isn’t it? There was no earthly need to leave an explanatory note! That’s why I just wanted to ask you, off the record, whether you’ve ever acknowledged the fact that you are a freakishly fortunate policeman?’

  * * *

  Back at the station, Mrs Groynes stood up, and was about to grab the mop, when Twitten remembered something.

  ‘So who did kill Jack Braithwaite?’

  ‘Ha!’ laughed Mrs Groynes, sitting down again. ‘I’m really enjoying talking to you like this. This is better than a weekend in Bognor.’

  ‘I’m assuming he didn’t kill himself?’

  ‘No, no. Jo again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. Why?’

  ‘Because Jack Braithwaite was the student who had wounded her at drama school, and it was the first time she’d seen him since then – and according to Bobby, she went berserk.

  ‘Bobby had no idea Jack was staying at that house, of course. He’d seen Jack a few times in the intervening years, but had always shielded Jo from knowing about it, because the mere mention of Braithwaite made her so angry. So they went in together to rob the house, and split up – Jo went upstairs, Bobby started in the front living room. And suddenly there was Jack, waiting for him. Jack jumped on him, but when he saw it was Bobby, he was so dumbfounded that he stopped. He poured himself a drink – Bobby had one too, to steady his nerves.

  ‘Naturally he was quite anxious about Jack unveiling him as a criminal; but he was much more anxious about what would happen if Jo came in and found Jac
k Braithwaite there.

  ‘And then, while he was still trying to think, she came in, saw Braithwaite and attacked him with this sword she pulled off the wall.’

  ‘Oh, crikey! How awful!’

  ‘Bobby tried to stop her. All the disarray in the room was because he was struggling with her. Apparently Braithwaite just cowered on the settee, pleading for his life.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But Jo was stronger than Bobby. It’s the story of their lives. The next thing he knew, the room was a bloodbath.’

  Once again, Twitten reflected with embarrassment that he had only wanted to know how Jo Carver ‘fitted in’. He felt a bit sick.

  ‘You all right, dear?’ Mrs Groynes asked, kindly. ‘Are you feeling a bit like a soppy ha’p’orth?’

  ‘Well, yes, quite frankly, I am. But I was also thinking that Sergeant Brunswick had already identified Bobby as the Opinion Poll lady. He’d done some very good detective work. He was getting close. I wonder why he didn’t search the dressing rooms for bloodstained clothes and so on? Why didn’t he do that?’

  ‘I think he did his best, dear. And with no help from me, as you can imagine! Sending him on a wild goose chase looking for Maisie was the best I could come up with to buy Bobby a bit of breathing space. Yes, you’re right. He did very well, Sergeant Brunswick, this time.’

  * * *

  Lying in his hospital bed, Sergeant Brunswick idly perused Behind the Eyes of a Killer (by the world-famous criminal psychologist J. R. R. Twitten), and waited for his auntie Violet. He was utterly fed up. If only her flat wasn’t on the second floor, he’d be allowed to go home, but it would be a week or more before he’d be safe to tackle stairs. The only advantage to being cooped up in hospital like this was that he knew now what a narcissist was (and it was a bit disappointing).

  The events at the Hippodrome still buzzed in his head: first, arriving there with Vince, and the gale of relief when he found Maisie safe and well; then a long and agonising period while all his colleagues from the police station were called up on the stage – which was all very unfair, what with Brunswick being the one who loved the Hippodrome, and who idolised Professor Mesmer.